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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28315005">his voice echoes through me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintmichael/pseuds/saintmichael'>saintmichael</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:08:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,537</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28315005</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintmichael/pseuds/saintmichael</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A voice sings in the forest that Adam runs through every morning. It becomes his everything.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Michael/Adam Milligan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>his voice echoes through me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Adam ran in the mornings, in the nature reserve near his house, at five a.m. every morning. He took the same route each time, winding through beautiful forests and up around a mountain until he circled back to his place.</p><p>The mountain was gorgeously abundant with flora, and Adam was not even sure he was allowed to run there the first few times. But he began hearing a lovely bass voice singing whenever he passed through one part of it. It wasn’t singing any words he could understand, just vibrant, clear tones that felt like they were going all through his body. He started thinking someone must live there, but he never saw another person. His curiosity overtook him enough that several times he searched through the area, looking for a house, a human, a something, but he never found anything.</p><p>Adam was alone for Christmas this year. Mom was gone, and the few friends he still had were all celebrating with their own families. Adam was scheduled Christmas night anyway; he didn’t really have time to travel. So he didn’t mind, he told himself.</p><p>He thought the person who lived on the mountain might be even lonelier. He had seen a video of a woman playing a kalimba on the internet and ordered it as a present. He thought its sweet little chiming sounds would pair nicely with the stranger’s deep voice. He wrapped it up nicely and wrote “To the singer on the mountain” on the box and took it with him on his morning run on Christmas day.</p><p>He tried his best to find them and searched for over an hour before he gave up and placed it under the shelter of a large tree. He knew there was no way the stranger was going to find the present, but, well. Stranger things had happened.</p><p>The singing stopped about half a minute later, when he was already continuing his run. Adam slowed down in confusion and stopped completely when he heard something drop on the ground behind him. He turned around and saw something that can only be described as something.</p><p>It had what seemed like five heads crammed into one space, but Adam could only really make out a bear’s head and a vulture’s head, and it had limbs and wings and tails but arranged in ways that Adam’s brain couldn’t make sense of, so it didn’t even try. He blinked a couple of times, and after the third opened his eyes to see himself staring back at him, which was even more incomprehensible.</p><p>“Can you see me?” he asked stridently.</p><p>“Uh, yeah,” Adam said. Did he forget to wake up this morning?</p><p>“You forgot your box,” his clone said, indicating the ground near Adam’s feet. Adam glanced down and realised that was what had dropped behind him.</p><p>“Oh,” he said, picking it up. “Actually, this is, um. A present for you.”</p><p>“For me?” That thunderous voice could <em>only </em>belong to the mystery singer that had accompanied Adam on his runs for the last ten months.</p><p>“Yeah. Merry Christmas.”</p><p>His doppelganger stared at him. “I don’t know if I can accept gifts from mortals.”</p><p>“Please? I got it for you.”</p><p>The stranger sighed and took the box for him, unwrapping the present with what seemed like a great deal of difficulty. Adam could only think that he didn’t quite know how to use his hands. When he got to the case holding the kalimba, he frowned at it in puzzlement.</p><p>“Open it,” Adam instructed. “Pull the zipper.” He somehow just <em>knew </em>this guy wouldn’t know to do it otherwise.</p><p>His twin obliged, and opened the case to find the kalimba, which prompted further baffled staring.</p><p>“It’s a kalimba. Um, you hit the keys and it plays the music. I know you like singing, so, uh. I guess I thought you’d like that too?” He cringed at his own lame explanation.</p><p>The other Adam tapped hesitantly on the keys until he figured out how to get the notes to come out properly. He winced when they did.</p><p>“Oh,” he said sombrely. “It reminds me of Choir.”</p><p><em>Choir?</em> “I’m sorry,” Adam said. “You don’t like choir?”</p><p>“I was not allowed to sing in Choir,” he said. “My voice is too earthen, they said. Unpleasant. Not high pitched and sweet, like this.” He continued tapping the notes gloomily.</p><p>“Your voice isn’t unpleasant,” Adam said. “It’s nice. I like it.”</p><p>“You do?”</p><p>“When I run through here and hear your voice, it’s usually the nicest part of my day,” Adam confessed. “It’s all downhill from there.”</p><p>“I’m sorry to hear that, Adam,” his twin tells him seriously. “You are a good man. You work long hours in a stressful environment because you truly believe in helping the sick and injured. May God have mercy on you.”</p><p>“Uh, what?”</p><p>He was still fiddling with the kalimba. “Thank you for the gift. I think if I accept it, however, my punishment will be extended. So I will have to return it.” He handed it back to Adam.</p><p>Adam held it close, feeling quite a degree of disappointment. “Punishment? For what?”</p><p>“I tried to experiment on myself, improve my productivity. God was unhappy. He bound me to this mountain to ‘take a chill pill’. I’m not even supposed to be talking to anyone, I think,” he said uncomfortably.</p><p>Choir? God? “You’re –” Adam began.</p><p>“I should go,” his twin said, his voice vibrating through Adam’s skin. “I’m sorry about your gift. Perhaps if someone were to play it around here, I could sing to it.” He vanished. Adam stood there blankly.</p><p>Adam took the kalimba with him on his runs after that. He wasn’t too great at playing it, especially while he was running, but no matter how discordant or slow his notes were, the voice of the stranger would change his song to match it, and it boomed ever deeper through Adam’s soul.</p><p>More than anything else, Adam yearned to meet the stranger again. His intense eyes bore into Adam’s every night in his dreams and yet Adam could never find him in the real world. He tried, yes, he left more gifts, and litter, and one time his shoe, in the hopes that the stranger would once more be compelled to appear to him, but there was never anyone there when Adam heard something falling behind him and turned around hopefully. He would shout, and scream, and cry for help, but the stranger wouldn’t show.</p><p>The days which Adam spent with a hoarse voice from screaming were the days he felt most broken, and the most alone. The five minutes he had spent talking with the stranger were the only five minutes in his life he had felt <em>whole </em>and <em>complete</em>. How terribly cruel for him to have dangled that in Adam’s face and then taken it away forever. Adam would stare in the mirror in the bathroom at home, at the hospital, at the mall, desperately trying to touch his reflection and feel something real. He only ever felt glass.</p><p>Maybe the worst part of it was Adam couldn’t even articulate to himself why he felt like this. Why he wanted the stranger so much. He just wanted. It hurt.</p><p>The next Christmas rolled around, after no time and an eternity all at once. Adam was working a sixteen-hour shift in the ER on Christmas Eve. When he got home, exhausted, at 4am in the morning, there was a big wrapped present in his living room.</p><p>“Uhh,” Adam said, out loud. There was a card on it. He read it in disbelief.</p><p>
  <em>Dear Adam,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Merry Christmas.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Michael has been very good, but he is still on time-out. This is your present, not his.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>From Santa</em>
</p><p>Adam didn’t really understand, but it was for him? Right? It had his name on it. He unwrapped it curiously to find a cage… with himself inside it, lying unconscious.</p><p>“Uhhhh,” Adam repeated. He opened the cage and pulled his unconscious doppelganger out, looking over him carefully.</p><p>“Are you okay?” he asked, shaking him a little. His clone opened his eyes and blinked at Adam.</p><p>“Adam?” he asked in return. Adam had never been more shaken by the thunderous boom. There was no mistaking it.</p><p>Adam was crying. He didn’t know why. “You have been awake for twenty hours,” said Michael, scanning him cautiously. “You should rest.”</p><p>Adam shook his head. He needed to stay up. What if Michael vanished when he closed his eyes?</p><p>“I cannot,” said Michael. “I appear to be bound to this body, now.”</p><p>Michael sternly escorted him to bed. He didn’t quite understand that Adam <em>needed </em>to change out of his work clothes into his pajamas, and blocked the door to the rest of the house like Adam was using it as an excuse to escape sleep. He only came over once Adam was safely under the sheets.</p><p>“I will play you a song, to lull you to sleep,” he said, picking up the kalimba Adam kept next to the bed. He plucked on it for twenty seconds before Adam sat up and gently took it out of his hands.</p><p>“You should stick to singing,” he advised.</p><p> </p>
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